By Prof. Dr. Ishaan Paudel

The show below is invigorating, as if a giant TV screen throwing a live stream in front of your eyes. In contrast to partial views to see the world which we are accustomed to, this view vividly shows the connectivity across and within different parts with certain patterns visibly discernible as the whole earth story has been framed into a single canvas. This totality leaves no space for lying about bigger reality, which partial stories are often poised to. It takes no moment for you to think of yourself as a citizen of the world, not to mention you being in the sky that high, on and of itself, can make you think as a citizen of space.
You will have this experience when you reach an altitude where you can see our planet earth almost in its entirety. Imagine yourself being in a moment when you are flying 36 thousand kilometers above equator in a geostationary orbit presumably with a powerful binocular attached to your satellite to see the details on the ground. It is June 22nd , the vicinity of the longest day in the Northern Hemisphere, and the time is 11:00 Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

To feel the experience, imagine that you are flying inside that satellite. You are over Makokou in Gabon moving eastward at the same speed as the spin of the earth keeping you at the same longitudinal position down below, as satellites in geostationary orbits do. You are seeing about 43 percent of earth’s surface that covers almost all landmasses of the planet and all lit by some sort of light – daylight or twilight – at this precise moment, a little less than sun’s coverage which is half of the planet. 8 billion out of current 8.2 billion of the global population is awake at this rare moment on this day, forget them if some are taking a day nap.

As the world is awake at that moment, when you text the message ‘Hello World, this is One World One Family moment’ in a global messaging system if any available to you, almost all on the planet may see your message and return a response to it.
Flora and fauna aside, let’s run through a few glimpses of what over 8 billion of us could be doing at that exact moment. Starting with Greenwich Line in the UK around Royal Observatory, people are seen enjoying the longest day of the year which began at 4:43am and will close at 9:21pm giving people whopping 16 hours and 38 minutes length of day in this wonderful tourist destination, where some are seen taking selfies putting one leg on the left of Greenwich Line and another on the right, just to boast with their family and friends far away in a livestream in social media that they are living in both the West and the East hemispheres at the same time. Thanks to the agreement made in an international convention called by US president Chester Arthur in 1884 when the line was chosen as Prime Meridian, this has since become the destination of countless tourists from around the world.

At the same moment, the sun is about to give a glimpse at the west coast of the US, while the east part of the country is already in motion. In Los Angeles in California, astronomical twilight just began 3 minutes ago with a small whitish line visible far in the east horizon. Over 18.5 million working people in Los Angeles are just hours away to spin production, income, and expenditure (PIE) wheel to produce about nine and half billion GDP on this particular day. Never mind, California is going through a lot of uncertainties at moment due to US government’s crackdown on illegal immigrants who are lifeline of California farms but threatened to be deported and thus may not contribute to that GDP as much as they did in the past.
In Tromso, a city in Norway north of Arctic Circle where the sun no longer goes down the horizon during this time but just wiggles on the horizon, tourists from South Korea are seen walking around trails and taking pictures at midnight, not to confuse that it is not night indeed.

The sun quickly descends in coming days to disappear in December for nearly 6 weeks in this place, thanks no one lives in the North Pole as such where one would never see the sun for entire 6 months in the winter. Australians, on the other side, are around shortest days of the year, in contrary to Northern Hemispherians who are enjoying the sun the longest. Many Australians in the places like Perth in the west coast are zooming in to restaurants to savor their dinner where the clock has hit 7:00pm and sun was down the horizon about two hours ago, while eastern Australians, in places like Brisbane and Sydney, may have already taken their cozy bed with their clocks ticking 9:00pm now.

In Houston, Texas, scientists in NASA will begin assembling soon to work in their Artemis 3 project which aims sending astronauts to the moon this year, which was in halt for decades ever since the astronauts were taken to the moon in Apollo 17 mission back in 1972.

Many other countries are in this race today. All in all, there are over 60 spaceports around the
world as launch sites today to send people and cargo in the space, resembling the ship ports that
were built in the coastlines of Europe and Americas during the Age of Exploration that began in
the 1400s and continued until the 1600s.
Just off the Suez Canal, a giant mega object floating on Indian Ocean draws your attention and you decide to see what this seemingly a colossal beast is. It was revealed to be one of the largest manmade container ships, OOCL Hong Kong, which measured nearly one-quarter
of a mile long (399.87m) with a full cargo capacity of nearly 200 thousand metric tonnes (21,413
TEUs), equivalent number of small cars in comparison.
The list goes on. Who wouldn’t be amazed to cherish the view nothing short of miracle that all of us on spaceship earth are fulfilling our roles down here on earth as demanded by the earth story in this genuinely beautiful setting?
But one big question lies in front of us: are we divided more today than before? Looking from that high, we don’t see it happening, but reality is different on the ground. Increased nationalism is tearing us apart. We are divided in the name of race, religion, and economic status.
We are operating less than optimal within these divisions.
Let’s take these matters seriously on this special day of June 22 and we all strive to unite the world as one. We have hardly more than 100 such days in our entire lifetime so let’s celebrate them a giant each year. Let’s call this day – One World One Family Day! This is relevant more than ever at the time when division in the world is on the rise.

Prof. Paudel teaches at Sheridan College, Canada. For details, please visit www.oneworldonefamily.world